The other day, we came to a fine page in a book with the following text:
"The PIG is driving the tractor... putt-putt-putt..."
The putt-putt-putt is supposed to be a tractor sound (there are round poofs of smoke which illustrate the rhythm going out of the tractor tailpipe).
Grace finds this page highly entertaining, enough so that she echoed back:
"PUH PUH PUH PUH PUH!"
It was the first time I ever heard a clear "P" from her, so I was very excited. But then I realized she had whispered the rest of the word (a shouted whisper).
Oh well.
If you're curious, Grace's consonants so far are roughly as follows...
| Grace's sound, roughly | Phonemes she uses the sound for (in rough "English-y" notation) | |
| stops | ||
| d | /t/ and /d/ | |
| b | /b/ and /p/ | |
| nasals | ||
| n | /n/ | |
| m | /m/ | |
| fricatives | ||
| ʒ (zh) | /s/, /z/ /ʃ/ (sh),/tʃ/ (ch) /dʒ/ (j) | |
| approximants | ||
| ɹ (some version of it) | /ɹ/ (r) and /w/ | |
| funny sounds | ||
| p | /p/ in a whispered tractor sound | |
| r* (coronal trill) | Used consistently for what a duck says -- I have no idea why | |
| [ʙ] (bilabial trill) | Used joyfully and frequently for silliness | |
| r̼ (linguolabial trill) | Used joyfully and spitfully for silliness | |
*Katharine things this might be [ʀ] (uvular trill), which would make some more sense of it since this at least has her tongue somewhere close to the position needed for a "quack" sound (velar plosive)
